Page:Roads to freedom.djvu/18

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Roads to Freedom

and unimaginative attention, the men who have sacrificed most through the wish to benefit mankind appear to be actuated far more by hatred than by love. And the demand for orthodoxy is stifling to any free exercise of intellect, producing an atmosphere in which a man of wide culture and detached thought finds it impossible to breathe. This cause, as well as economic prejudice, has made it difficult for the "intellectuals" to co-operate practically with the more extreme reformers, however they may sympathize with their main purposes and even with nine-tenths of their programme.

Another reason why radical reformers are misjudged by ordinary men is that they view existing society from outside, with hostility towards its institutions. Although, for the most part, they have more belief than their neighbours in human nature's inherent capacity for a good life, they are so conscious of the cruelty and oppression resulting from existing institutions that they make a wholly misleading impression of cynicism. Most men have instinctively two entirely different codes of behaviour: one towards those whom they regard as companions or colleagues or friends, or in some way members of the same "herd"; the other towards those whom they regard as enemies or outcasts or a danger to society. Radical reformers are apt to concentrate their attention upon the behaviour of society towards the latter class, the class of those towards whom the "herd" feels ill-will. This class includes, of course, enemies in war, and criminals; in the minds of those who consider the